Awareness, Consciousness and Spirituality Blog

The Attitude Required For Inner Freedom

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Sen.

If I have to summarize the attitude which is required for coming to a place of true inner freedom, it would be – being fearless. The attitude of being fearless is not about the complete “absence” of fear (after all fear is one of the natural dimensions of thinking/mind) but about the openness to allow fear, understanding it to be a part of the reality of life. This capacity for being fearless is present in all of us, it’s an inherent part of our nature as life-energy, it’s just that a lot of us don’t make the choice to connect with this capacity. We would rather see ourselves from a victim-mindset, we would rather wallow in self-pity, we would rather indulge in doom stories, we would rather be meek, we would rather keep seeking external assurance, than make the choice to connect with the attitude of being fearless. There is a huge difference between trying to “think positive” and being fearless – it’s just that the vibe, of the attitude of being fearless, is deeply positive by itself, because this attitude makes you resistance-free.

When I understood that a state of true inner freedom is not possible if it’s dependent on an external factor, it became clear to me that I was not going to find inner freedom through “knowledge”, through spirituality, through understanding the laws/physics of life, through positive thinking, through manifesting a certain reality/desire or through any form of mind perception per se. This understanding allowed me to see through the delusion of seeking the state of inner freedom through an external pursuit. If my inner freedom was dependent on any external factor, like my understanding of life, then it would be on shaky grounds, because the truth is you can’t be “certain” about anything in life – you can have a knowing, but even then you can’t be fully certain about it, it’s only a knowing. So, I have a knowing about life, about its reality, but my inner freedom is not dependent on this knowing – even if all of this “knowing” were to be totally groundless and false, I would still have my inner freedom. In simple words, this state of inner freedom is simply the attitude of being open to anything, there are no conditions, it’s not about saying I will feel free “if” xyz is true, there are no ifs, there are no dependencies, it’s just an attitude of being totally open.

The attitude of being fearless, or being open, can be chosen at any point, irrespective of your level of awareness, irrespective of your understanding, irrespective of your situation. It’s simply a choice you make in your being. So why don’t people usually make this choice? It’s simply because of the tendency to think that I can only feel free once “xyz” happens or the tendency to give our power away to an external factor (as a means to find pseudo-security). The truth is it is not inner wholeness that will make you feel free, it’s your sense of inner freedom that brings you to wholeness – if you are waiting for the state of inner wholeness to happen, before you can feel free, it will just be an eternal waiting period.

The reason why I emphasize so much on the “state of allowing” is because it develops your attitude towards being fearless, towards being open – it’s very logical. Just look within and see if you are placing a condition on your sense of inner freedom; is there a subtle thought, in you, that I am waiting for xyz to happen before I can feel free? In my case, when I got this understanding about inner freedom, I was able to connect with being fearless in spite of overwhelming mental and emotional momentum of depression and fear that I was going through. Even now, with all the balance I have (after releasing the momentum), it’s my attitude of being fearless/open that gives me my sense of inner freedom not vice versa.

Inner freedom has nothing to do with trust

I remember getting a question about – “is not your trust in the well-being of life at the core of the freedom/confidence that you feel” – my answer was, no, my sense of inner freedom has nothing to do with any form of trust I have in life. In fact I have no real trust in life, it’s just that I’ve “observed” the way life works, and it scientifically is a force that works towards well-being, quite simply because it’s the very nature of life-energy to move towards balance every time there is an imbalance, it naturally moves towards harmony when there is disturbance, moving towards harmony is its natural movement. But I was able to make this unbiased observation only from a place of inner freedom, if I was trying to “think positive” I wouldn’t be able to make an unbiased observation. And even if it had turned out that life was a chaotic force, if it was an unintelligent and clueless energy, and its only purpose was suffering, even then it wouldn’t have affected my sense of inner freedom – it has nothing to do with trusting life or having faith. None of my beliefs, or understandings about life, is the reason for my sense of inner freedom – it’s totally independent of all of this. Inner freedom purely comes from the attitude of being fearless/open to “anything” happening – as soon as you impose even one condition, you lose your sense of inner freedom, you become hostage to that condition.

You can see this in relationships, where the whole deal of “trust” can become a means of fear-based thinking. The question is – why do want to base your sense of security on trusting someone, why not base it on your sense of freedom towards anything that happens on the outside? When you impose the weight of “trust” on someone/something, you are indirectly stating that your sense of security is dependent on your trust (with an unavoidable fear of being let down). You can also see the manipulative angle of saying things like “I trust you” as a means to control someone through the force of guilt of breaking your trust. There are many people who spend a lifetime of suffering under the influence of guilt for having failed someone’s trust. The truth is that no-one is “obliged” to be responsible for you sense of security, no-one is obliged to be responsible for your sense of hurt, if someone is being responsible towards you it’s a bonus stemming from their attitude, but they are not obliged to do so. People who keep getting hurt are the ones who have the attitude of making others responsible for their sense of security, happiness and esteem.

Fear is a very effective aspect to use as a control mechanism. You can easily control someone (who doesn’t have inner freedom) through manipulating their fears or insecurities. You can see how parents use the tool of fear to control the kids, and these kids grow up to use the same mechanism to manipulate others (and themselves), and we end up creating a world run by fear-based motivations. Even the teaching of “trust in life” (or some higher power) ends up making you a meek person, such teachings have the underpinnings of making your sense of freedom dependent on an external force – once you buy into the teaching of finding security through “trust” in an external force, you can then easily be manipulated through fear based teachings of being servile to this sense of external force. You can see an underlying vibe of “meekness” that’s present in this attitude of basing your security on trust.

Inner freedom brings flexibility in thinking

Without a space of inner freedom, your thinking will always border along the lines of “black and white”, simply because you are trying to seek security through your thinking, hence you want something solid to hold on to. A person who does not have inner freedom would always want a “concept” to hold on to, a technique to cling to or an understanding to put trust in. When your sense of security/freedom is dependent on your “thinking” you will end up becoming rigid in terms of wanting to hold on to a pattern of thinking instead of allowing the openness to evolve in your thinking as a part of your growth.

When you have inner freedom, it allows you to be open to the space of uncertainty, to the space of being wrong, to the space of knowing that you may not know everything (and don’t have to know everything), to the space of confusion, to the space of imperfection, to space of making mistakes. I allow myself to follow through on what feels “resonant” in my being, in my current awareness, I am not trying to hold on to a sense of “conviction” about anything – conviction leaves you no space for growth. When I write about certain understandings that I have about life, I am just sharing what resonates with me in my current level of awareness, it’s not a “conviction” neither do I want you to take it up as a belief; just see if it resonates for you, if it doesn’t just drop it. Give yourself the freedom to be flexible in your thinking. Flexibility is an inherent aspect present in anyone who has inner freedom. Rigidity, in thinking, is rooted in a lack of inner freedom.

Even when you think about your desires, or use the practice of “visualization”, allow yourself the freedom to be flexible with regards to the exact specifics of how you want the desire to manifest. This flexibility allows you to be more resistance-free towards incorporating insights, or inspirations, that can come from within, or from outside, as part of your “higher consciousness” (the intelligence of your life-stream or non-physical intelligence) giving you a better picture of the path that’s most suited for you under your current level of maturity and awareness. You can only have this flexibility when you are not basing your sense of security on the desire manifesting the way you specifically want it. Inner freedom allows you to let go of the vibe of “desperation” which is inherently resistive in nature.

Inner freedom starts in your being

When you are inhabiting a physical body, you are accosted with the brain and the heart, as two centers of intelligence, along with your own thinking as a being, and the intelligence of your non-physical space (intelligence of your life-stream). It’s little wonder that there are several possibilities of conflicts, confusion and turmoil, given the presence of so many different “intelligences” spouting their views. The heart has a view, the brain has a view, your being has a view and the intelligence of your life-stream provides a view, and they may all feel totally out of sync. Ultimately, it’s you, as the being/soul, who has to take ownership as the captain of the ship. If you have no space of freedom, you will just feel pulled around by all these view-points without any sense of peace or control. The paradox is that a lot of people think of the “state of allowing” as some permanent letting go of control, when in truth it brings you to a place of real control because it brings you to a place of inner freedom. The state of allowing is not about allowing yourself to be pulled around by the mind (any aspect of mind, be it your brain, heart, being or life-stream) rather it’s about developing the openness to allow the mind without being “lost” in identification with the thinking, so you are not suppressing neither are you lost in identification (being at the mercy of any thought or emotion) – this is what develops the attitude of being fearless, of being open, of inner power. Once you have a space of inner freedom, you can then sync up the thinking of all these minds, and be a channel of balanced expression.

A lot of people misconstrue the point of “letting go” or “allowing” as a pointer towards losing your sense of ownership – in the sense of surrendering to some external force while losing your sense of self. In truth, the practice of allowing (or conscious letting go) is supposed to accomplish four objectives

1. Release the momentum of past accumulation of emotional energy (in your physical body and in your being), so that “emotional pressure” is no longer a factor influencing you

2. Release the mind momentum in your brain and in your being, so that patterns of conditioned thinking as well as patterns of imbalanced thinking (based on past unconsciousness) don’t influence your being

3. Develop your sense of inner power/freedom against emotional or mental influence of any form

4. Become “baggage free” so that you can live from the “wisdom” of the moment, through a balanced mind, instead of living from the pressure of accumulated emotions and thinking patterns.

As you can see, in all the four objective, the central point is that “you” are finding real freedom and thus real control – in none of the objectives is it hinted that you lose your sense of self or surrender to some external force. Even the intelligence of your life-stream is to be taken as a guidance which you “consider”, it’s not to be taken as a dictate which you simply have to follow. I get this question about – “should I blindly follow my intuition” – and the answer would be, no, don’t blindly follow anything. Wisdom is a product of a balanced mind, which requires your being to have an inner freedom to “consider” different aspects of thinking and incorporate a balanced view. The truth is that even the inner sense of guidance, coming from your life-stream, needs to be taken up with the wisdom, in awareness, considering the physical implications of it. History is an evidence of people who faced some brutal endings mostly because they followed their inner call blindly without incorporating aspects of physical wisdom – it’s a choice, but I don’t associate any nobility with following an inner guidance blindly without incorporating your own sense of wisdom based on your experience of physical life, based on the instincts of your brain and heart. As I said, I don’t blindly “trust” anything, even my intuition or inspiration, I base my decision on what really resonates with “me” based on my current level of awareness while incorporating all aspects of thinking and feeling, with a conscious openness to the consequences.

I get this question about – “how do I know if it’s my inner guidance” – the answer is, you can’t know, you can never know, and hence you can’t ever trust blindly. In fact, even if it was truly an inner guidance, it still doesn’t mean that you need to follow it blindly without incorporating your own wisdom based on your own awareness of physicality, unless you want to make a choice of surrendering your ownership, your responsibility to your body and your dependents. Your inner guidance, and inspiration, is useful as an “assistance” for your life, but it’s not about following anything blindly – you have to incorporate the thinking of your brain, your heart, your own awareness as a being, along with the inspirations/guidance, or intuitions, that come from within as a part of the intelligence of your life-stream. Your awareness, as a being, is all you have to depend on truly, and your sense of inner freedom is what really gives you the power to incorporate real wisdom in your life – any form of dependency, or blind trust, can cause you to surrender your wisdom.

If your question is – “how can I be sure of my decisions and my perspective, how do I know for sure what’s the right thing to do?” – again the answer is, you can’t ever be totally sure, you have to allow the space of uncertainty. You only have your current level of awareness, in your being, to base your decisions. You need to have the inner freedom to be okay with consequences instead of seeking “guaranteed” assurances. Always remember that growth is eternal, and there is no such thing called perfection – so allow yourself the freedom to explore, don’t seek certainties about everything. To feel certain is not a reality of life, anyone can see the aspect of uncertainty inherent to life’s movement. If you keep trying to be certain, you will feel stuck and confused, you will no longer have the independence to explore. You need to have freedom even from your inherent need for absolute security, without this freedom you will become too rigid in your movement.

I am as much on a path of growth and evolution in my awareness as anyone, and my sense of inner freedom simply allows me a smoother growth in my awareness because it’s unhindered by a resistance based “holding on”. There are surely some older posts, in this blog, where my understanding was not “well rounded” enough, and I do delete some old posts which don’t resonate with my current awareness. In case you find some contradiction, in the understanding of life, between my present posts and some older posts, take it to be a part of evolution in my own understanding based on my current level of awareness. One thing you can be sure of is that there is never a contradiction on what “inner freedom” really means, and the journey towards it, it’s only my understanding of life that can evolve – the state of inner freedom is independent of any of these understandings about life. The core pointer of this blog is always towards finding inner freedom above everything else.

61 Comments

AlliswellOctober 26, 2012 at 3:46 pm

Sen,
I understand what you are saying, but it confuses me, as well. It seems like there is even more thinking involved. I understood the concept of trusting life and following your lifestream, but now it seems like over thinking and making things too complicated.
How are you able to let go and be allowing in life, if it seems like all decisions require so many steps… When the concept was simple, it made sense to me, but now it seems like there are stipulations that make it more mind controlled. Trust life, but not too much because you can’t really trust life. Follow your passion, but be objective. Do not follow your heart or head. What am I doing wrong?

SenPost authorOctober 26, 2012 at 6:56 pm

Alliswell, basically the real pointer here is not about “thinking” or “making decisions”, but about the level of inner freedom that you possess as a person. You can notice how a slight change of perspective can cause confusion (and possibly fear) in your being which basically would imply that your sense of security was impinged on a certain notion/knowing/concept, and when its questioned you feel a sense of fear/instability coming up in your being – this would just be an indication of a lack of total inner freedom.

I did not say that it’s not true that life-force is a stream of well-being, I’ve mentioned in this post that “scientifically” life-energy’s natural movement is always towards solution/balance/harmony. It’s just that I also mention that even if that was not the case, it wouldn’t affect my sense of inner freedom/wholeness because I have an openness towards anything that arises. You can yourself the same question – if you really have an openness towards anything that arises, or is your sense of wholeness dependent on a certain condition being true. This openness is an “attitude”, it is not linked to any understanding, it’s purely a choice of being, a real and available choice. When you lack inner freedom, you will always sense this lack in you, and it will be evident in the way you experience life – there will always be a fear-based motivation, a meekness and a sense of dependence. You might be able to observe this in yourself, and you will also see that though you mentioned that you felt comforted in the simple concept of “let go and allow life” you did not really feel a sense of total inner freedom and had a sense of dependency and meekness/fear irrespective of this understanding. The truth is that it’s not an understanding of life that brings “total” inner freedom, it’s simply a choice towards this attitude of being fearless and open.

When you do have a real sense of inner freedom, you will not have this confusion about making decisions. In fact, it’s very easy to make decisions from a place of inner freedom. Right now you may feel confused about certain decisions when you try to “let go” (and keep thinking about whether its inner guidance or ego guidance or whatever) when your natural impulse could be to take action – and you may be trying to let go as a part of fear and as a part of not trusting your sense of wisdom. When you have inner freedom, you will know when to let go and when to follow up on an action, because you are not dependent on a “technique based” living. That’s the reason why it’s important to find inner freedom above anything else.

GBOctober 26, 2012 at 7:46 pm

And I’m back to square one! I quit! It’s too hard for my mind to comprehend all this stuff about life. It’s impossible for me to reach a place of inner freedom.It definitely is complicated.Life sucked before I gained access to these articles.I was happy and relieved to stumble upon your articles(old ones). Your articles gave me hope.Now my mind is super messed up due to the contradiction between the old and new articles. I think I’m not intelligent enough to understand your articles.Life sucks again. All the understanding I gained about life through your previous articles has gone down the drain. I’m very disappointed

SenPost authorOctober 26, 2012 at 8:08 pm

GB, this is the point that I am making in this post that if your sense of “happiness” (and thus freedom) is associated with a certain understanding/knowledge, you cannot be in a place of true inner freedom. The feeling of disappointment or confusion (or life sucks feeling) that you feel is simply an indication of a momentum of your mind which still has a strong hold on your being, in that it feels relieved when it can cling to a certain understanding and feels fearful the moment it feels a confusion – such a rigidity does not allow for deeper understanding, growth or evolution. If you can let go of identifying with this part of your mind that’s spewing thoughts of disappointment and allow yourself to sense if you can feel an inner freedom despite your mind’s confusion you will get an idea of what true inner freedom means. In truth, I’ve not said anything in this post that’s contradicting with my older posts, except that it builds on a deeper perspective on inner freedom. The simple pointer of this post is that true inner freedom is independent of holding on to an understanding – if you connect with the sense of being open, instead of identifying with the disappointment/fear/confusion in your mind, you will see a clarity emerging on its own.

RahOctober 26, 2012 at 8:25 pm

This article just points to being even less dependent on any external source for inner freedom. Thats all.

AliasOctober 27, 2012 at 7:19 pm

GB, every morning life starts over. You are completely fresh, your mind is new. See it for yourself, the first few seconds before you open your eyes, there is no confusion, none, simply because there are no thoughts. Then thoughts start appearing from here and there, and like a fountain flood your mind. It is the “I” that is the center of confusion. Disappointment is the result of intense desire without a conclusion. The “I” desiring and explanation, a conclusion or freedom, but from what? From itself, from the “I”! Do you see the paradox? Questions simply create division, they merely divide things into two or even more portions. Where there are questions, the mind seeks for answers, conclusions, and every conclusion is an illusion. It is not real simply because the nature of our minds, our thoughts, our perception,does not have the capacity to comprehend the whole; it only perceives a part of the whole, a fragment, and this fragment is merely an approximation. Therefore any conclusion, any type of freedom that comes through a fixed point of view, is not freedom at all. Identifying with a particular idea, or result, is bound to create conflict in you.

Perhaps you should read Sen’s articles again, then give it some time, some thought, and even then it requires a lot of patience to enter a state of mind that is free of confusion. And if I may say so, confusion will always be there, maybe even after 10 years of inner search. And the most exciting part is that after some time, it is confusion that reminds you that you are in the right track (right in a sense that you live, that you learn, that you are not static) . If you wake up one day thinking that you’ve reached enlightenment, that you have the answers to all the questions, then believe me… that is the most confused day of your life.

Give it time, it will come slowly, it will come so slowly that one day the word “disappointment” is going to become “wisdom” without you being conscious about it.

Kevin W.October 28, 2012 at 10:47 pm

I really understand how you’re feeling, because I felt the same way just a few weeks back. This process definitely involves a lot of confusion and it definitely sucks sometimes. But the thing that I realized, especially after reading this post, was that I was dependent on an understanding that made sense to me in order to feel free. This post just points to the fact that true inner freedom is dependent on nothing. You don’t have to hold on to anything. You can be free in spite of your mind’s confusion. Like Sen said, inner freedom is something that we all are inherently capable of. When you let go of the things that you depend on for a sense of freedom, you actually find true freedom. That’s what Sen is saying. But I really understand how you’re feeling. I think if you read over this post a few times you will see what the true point of it was. This post actually gave me a lot of clarity once I understood it

xOctober 26, 2012 at 9:21 pm

So, does this mean life is not supporting well-being 100% sure?

What I have understood is this: Life is always good, it sucks only when you are trying to control it with fear. Right?

Can I still trust life?

MarkusOctober 29, 2012 at 8:43 pm

Life is always going to support your eternal being – that might at times contradict what is best for your physical self, though. Life sucking is only a perception. The Dalai Lama told a story about one of his brethren who was freed after 15 years of imprisonment and torture. Asked if he ever felt hopeless, he answered that there were days when he did not feel very compassionate and loving of those who beat him. That is what upset him, that he would stop feeling compassion for the men who hurt him daily. His situation sounded terrible, but he was balanced enough that it was just another experience – he was only bothered by how he reacted once in a while.

pavloOctober 26, 2012 at 9:59 pm

Excellent post Sen. The pointer here seems to be to not always look for a black or white answer in either a thought or an emotion. Play around with it, don’t take it so seriously, don’t make it so important. Just see if it serves you or not, because life will always balance you out if you wait. Don’t be in such a hurry to accept or deny whatever comes up in your conscious awareness. Don’t be afraid, just be open, but don’t struggle with it, let it be. If it has an element of truth, that confirmation will come to you, but it won’t come by forcing a truth or conversely dont’ push something away out of fear. Don’t fear fear, allow and it will go.

JennyOctober 27, 2012 at 12:37 am

When I began studying spirituality, I read book after book, teacher after teacher, acquiring vast amounts of knowledge, getting a spiritual ‘hit’ each time, as Adya calls it, but I never truly got liberated by any of the knowledge I acquired. If anything, the more I learnt, the staunchly and obnoxiously I defended it, while privately I got more fearful of the fact that I was unable to translate any of that knowledge to the practicality of my life. In fact, some teachers say that the people who make the most progress are those who know nothing of spirituality beforehand for then they are open, without preconceived ideas/expectations. Its very hard to ‘fill a full cup’. It was only after 5 years, fed-up with it all, when I chucked out all my books, resigned myself to not knowing anything, emptied myself of most of the concepts I had clung so tightly to, that this blog showed up.

This is a very important post, precisely because it is asking us to let go of holding on to all the pointers we have accumulated in previous posts as the way to true freedom.
Correct me if I’m wrong Sen but what you are simply pointing towards is the choice of experiencing life openly, fearlessly, not because of how aligned we are with our life-stream, or the understandings that we have gained about life but in spite of them.

Understanding the physics of life, regaining wholeness, releasing resistance etc, does not necessarily lead to an inner freedom. It is possible to clutch tightly to these understandings, getting shaken by another perspective that would challenge this. Furthermore, regaining wholeness by releasing resistance and acquiring an understanding about the physics of life is not necessarily a bliss-only trip that exempts one from making mistakes, nor can it force about an expression that is not aligned with the soul’s blue-print for growth (which ties in with the last post on Law of Attraction & Destiny).

Inner freedom therefore must be independent of all this knowledge. Some teachers call it, ‘to stop arguing with what is’ and anyone who is in the process of releasing momentum can see that truly, freedom comes from allowing life to unfold precisely as it is and experiencing it as just that.

If, as it is now apparent, life is constant motion, evolution, change, then holding on to any knowledge/understanding is simply inviting suffering back in. You mention Sen, in older posts, that what is true is never lost so whatever understanding/wisdom/balance we gain will remain within us, rising to meet us in life as occasion demands but only if we allow it by staying open to life as it is.

So the being might awaken to awareness of itself, the mind might gain wisdom/logic about life, but life belongs to life (as you have so aptly put it in a previous post). Any illusion of control is just that. An illusion. Much easier to go with the flow than to argue with life.

Could I wrap up this rather long comment with this: the mark of a great teacher is one who liberates as many of his/her students into fellow teachers as is possible. I was initially thrown by this post, until I read it again, taking my time. There is great wisdom in it.

MarkusOctober 29, 2012 at 8:48 pm

Jenny, that book knowledge and absorbing teachings is useful, though. It seems to get the logical mind to open up to accepting new realities. Even if some minds can take it too far and block one’s growth for a while, it does open the door for some of us. Softens the resistance of the mind, that is to say.

kateOctober 27, 2012 at 9:29 am

Am I correct to say that inner freedom is following the so called “pathless path”?Following the tao basically.
Thanks for the insight into being fearless because it clarified a very important point for me.

YoshiOctober 27, 2012 at 11:52 am

Hi Sen,

I read this latest blog you wrote. Very interesting material. I was able to get the parts of what you said about restrictive nature of things. And I think that has a lot to do with my suffering. And the conditioning we grow up as kids molded by our parents, society and the culture we live in has a lot to do with how people live their lives. I still have these out-pours of guilt, anger, regret, depression since I’ve become ill to the point where I am dependent on others.
But not as intense as before. I found a better Dr. who uses both psychiatric and holistic methods for healing. He told me to write a poem about connecting to the source or universe.

The Buddhist teachings have the concept of karma as a way of explaining all cause, condition and effect relationships. Some people live a fulfilling life, whereas others live a really difficult life. For those who suffer, the goal is to change their karma and their destiny of suffering into joy. And I think becoming fearless or becoming able to muster up courage to do what is scary or difficult helps one’s awareness grow and life becomes more fulfilling.

I’ve practiced the Buddhist teaching for a while and I used to feel this incredible source or presence that the deities associated with the Buddhist teachings are helping me, most of the time without my knowing. But after I got sick, I lost the faith and belief… and my psychiatrist said that the Buddhist teaching didn’t work for me because the doubts and the negativity or restrictiveness I had about myself was much stronger, hence I became ill. When you harbor such negativity for a long time, it will eventually manifest in the body. For me, it is just a shame b/c it happens so early in my life.

I know I could have done more with my life, but I can only do what I can now with what I got.

Thanks for your posts. I think it helps a lot of your readers because it’s cutting edge and quite new. And I believe a lot of what you talk about could be incorporated into the Buddhist teachings because the Buddha said the nature of all things are constantly changing, and the Buddhist teachings were meant to adapt to its current time and continue to help others and relieve their suffering which leads to joy.

PavloOctober 27, 2012 at 6:16 pm

Indeed Jenny, there is a very special and important
message in This article. Like you I had to re-read this
post more than a few times to capture the essence of
Sen’s message. This writing could well be one of the
most important, if not THE most important articles
in this entire blog.

AliasOctober 27, 2012 at 8:35 pm

Sen, very nicely put. I see confusion among some replies, which is marvelous, because there is movement.

I don’t know if you can kindly allow me to mention that fear and though are best friends. One does not go without the other. In fact if one has the capacity to see very clearly, one will see that fear precedes every single thought. Most will reject this instantly, but in time it will become rather obvious. Has one noticed those moments where ones’ mind is totally absorbed in emptiness? Not when you are focusing on something, but rather when you are unconsciously aware of everything around you. There is no thought there. No fear, no anxiety, no looking for freedom, no need for looking at all. In such moments, when the “I” IS NOT, the division between pleasure and pain simply ends. It may last only for a few seconds, but it is an indication that such a state is possible. You’ll see children spending whole hours during their day in such a state (especially during boring class hours).

Obviously the point is not to stop thinking, but rather to understand what a thought is made of. You know, the brain is just one organ, just like the heart, the lungs, the stomach. One can simply not expect it to provide the solutions to all one’s problems.

To look for freedom, implies that you are a prisoner. One part of thought says, “I” want to be free, and another part of thought ask’s “how” or suggests a solution. But they are both the “I”, does one see the paradox? To “look for freedom”, inner or outer, one admits that he is in conflict, that he is imprisoned and that he must be free of it. How can the very mind that creates the prison cell, ever be free?

Humans like fear as much as they like thinking. Has one noticed the increasing number of appalling splatter horror movies that come out every year? Millions of dollars are invested into producing pure garbage. Has one noticed the increasing amounts of money that go into military and defense? Trillions of US dollars per year (poverty would be solved globally…). Why? because of the fear of terrorism… and so a new form of fear is created, that of a nuclear blast from the the big guys. And so, fear breeds fear. People eat their lunch while looking at shocking, terrifying TV shows or news programs as if it is all quite normal. People also fear of loosing their jobs, their money, their property, their loved ones, their own lives, etc. But they don’t mind watching it on TV, or if it’s happening to their neighbor.

You know, “inner freedom” in the sense of a permanent state is the ultimate illusion. It is a trick of the mind, and if one has seen it once, then one knows of how capable the mind is on playing tricks. One finds freedom only if one is free already. As long as there is a thought process that questions “Am i free?” or “how do I get free?”, there will be no freedom at all.

Freedom of any kind, implies the many, not the one. The “I” can never be free of itself. When the “I” becomes the many, when the focus moves from the “ego” to “others”, when one’s consciousness shifts from “thought and fear of oneself” to “wisdom and love for others”, then something new comes into being.

That is what Sen is doing here, and it’s wonderful. Keep it up.

JennyOctober 28, 2012 at 2:08 am

Fear by itself is not a negative. It is a healthy and necessary aspect of the mind responsible for the fight or flight response that determines our reaction to a potentially harmful situation. It is the suppressed momentum of conditioned fear, coupled with a low awareness that gives rise to the kind of rampant fear mongering that is present today. I can honestly say that the more my awareness grows, through the release of mind momentum and more importantly the choice of what I choose to focus on, the less fear I experience about life in general. In fact, I used to be horribly afraid of horror movies and now a very pleasant side-effect of releasing the mind momentum is that I find that I can watch one and derive a good chuckle out of the absurdity of it all. I’m now rather fond of the Aliens and Predator franchises. I’ve watched them quite a few times in the last few months and each time, I notice a dissipation in the ‘night-time boogey-man’ syndrome I used to experience after watching any horror films. These films are somebody’s creative outlet and expression, equally as valid as Anna Karenina is poetic, each enjoyed by various audiences precisely because of their differences. What is garbage to one is genius to another.

Terrorism is the result of the collective fear of ‘the other’. We fuel it on a personal level with the internal mind wars that we wage upon ourselves, which in turn fuels the global collective level. Terrorism will die when more and more people are willing to enlighten themselves about the physics of life, when we cease to fear the different expressions of life in various forms, when we gain understandings that give rise to truth, wisdom and by extension, love; when whole nations are willing to acknowledge that the cost at which their own comfort comes maybe at the expense of other perhaps lesser technologically advanced nations but who are no less worthy of the merits of a good life. Terrorism will die when we stop giving our individual powers away and acknowledge that we are all endowed with the capacity to comprehend the inherent well-being present in life, and that it is available to each and everyone of us regardless of creed, colour and which way you wear your trousers (or if any at all). We may not see it eradicated in our lifetime, nor even in a generation further up, but the work of this blog and others like it, is to liberate as many of us as is possible because we are part of the collective and therefore contribute greatly to it. Our light becomes another’s light and on and on…till more come to the light of awareness. The onus therefore is on all of us who find our way towards the light to first liberate ourselves, for how can we help the collective if we are, ourselves, embroiled in inner turmoil? To merely observe and express horror that such atrocities exist in the world does nothing to alleviate it.

In the light of awareness, it is my experience that the quality of life I enjoy is directly proportional to my understanding of the physics of life. This is universal. Our programming, our values, our freedoms will change as our wisdom in the mechanics of life grows, as we move more in harmony with the well-being inherent in life, of which we are all a part.

This blog is wonderfully simple, not at all intellectual and my guess is that this is the reason it resonates with so many of us. It comes down to this post. Freedom is indeed the pathless path (as referenced by Kate) of the peaceful warrior, who transcends the dark not by fighting for or against it, but by embracing it through wisdom, love, truth. Darkness cannot exist where there is light – pure physics. Light can brighten a dark room but darkness cannot swallow light, once it is turned on. And no, that is in no way suggestive….

AlliswellOctober 28, 2012 at 3:51 am

Alias, Nice commentary. I have read and reread this post many times. I love the “wisdom and love for others” comparison in consciousness.

SuhasiniOctober 28, 2012 at 6:36 am

All pointers point to the same TRUTH. Depending on the intensity of mind / emotional energy some pointers may resonate stronger than others. Follow one pointer that resonates most with your being and let go off others. Once you reach level of awareness you can appreciate the value of different pointers. Non-judgement, non-resistance and non-attachment are three words Tolle uses to point the same state of total allowing.
Confusion / frustration / disappointment etc arises when we engage our mind to analyse and compare for so called better ‘understanding’. Once you understand the ‘basics’ of the process and have a pointer that resonates with your being, I would even suggest to stop reading any so called spiritual articles and allow the process to take its course. Give yourself time, be patient and be kind to yourself. This helped me to stop stirring up the mud. Once a stable state is reached we will be able to read any number of articles from anyone without getting confused.

DaveOctober 28, 2012 at 9:22 am

Sen,

What about say the attitude of being on the internet or watching what you would normally watch on TV e.g Football when you have placed inner-freedom before all else. For example, I will sit down and allow myself to feel whatever im experiencing for 20-30 minutes and then later watch a bit of tele. However, there is that nagging feeling coming from the mind saying that I shouldn’t be watching TV or this or that. How did it work for you?

SenPost authorOctober 30, 2012 at 11:32 am

Dave, entertainment is a part of the experience we desire as beings, the other part is growth. One has to bring a balance towards entertainment and growth, one can’t become too hung up on the entertainment part and one can’t become too hung up on the growth part – it has to be a balance. Just take a more objective look at your life and see you find this balance happening – it’s okay to indulge in entertainment (like watching TV) but it becomes a problem when it becomes a means to distract yourself from dealing with your internal drive for growth. Of course, on the other end, it’s very possible that you become too serious about just focusing on being productive, or focusing on growth, while feeling guilty about any form of entertainment that you indulge in. You can consciously work on bringing this balance, and the way to do this is to first realize that a balance between entertainment and growth is what is required as a part of the reality of life. In my own personal life, I used to be a kind of a workaholic who got his sense of identity from being “productive” and was in suppression (or would feel guilty) of allowing myself the freedom to have fun or chilled out even for a few moments – I was living a struggle-based mindset. When I started seeing the reality of life and understood what balance involves, I made a conscious choice towards letting go of this “nagging” pull of the struggle-based mindset (part of gaining inner freedom), and allowed myself to conscious connect with my joy dimension while also understanding that it was not about becoming imbalanced in joy dimension either. You have to work on making conscious choices towards balanced which does require you to first develop a real freedom from any form of “pull” (including the pull of guilt or even pull towards growth).

WynoneOctober 28, 2012 at 3:52 pm

Sen,
I just wanted to share an observation of mine.
I’ve always known it and been aware of it, but now, as I’m growing even more in awareness, I can’t help but notice how much my mom is used to telling me negative stories from her daily experiences, now that I’m away from home and I’ve been a student for 3 years now.
She’s a woman in a wheelchair and all my life I’ve been the one person she finds solace in, a comfort, and someone who manages to alleviate her spirits.
Maybe that’s a big reason why I started studying Psychology in the first place. It’s inherent in my nature to be a helping hand to people, with my mom being the first one who made me realize that.
Of course, I’m more than grateful to be conditioned with belief in myself.
But the contradiction comes when I realize how much negative patterns of thinking I’ve soaked up from the way my mom rationalizes stuff. I thought I wasn’t like that, but now, when she writes to me in Skype and asks me how’s my day, and then bombards me with something negative about her daily experience, and her victim mindset, I get so angry inside that it’s been going like that for years. This contradiction of trying to make me believe in myself, while at the same time displaying negative focus on life as a whole. I can understand where this comes from- her life hasn’t been easy, and I’m beginning to realize that beneath my sunny exterior lies a part of me that has embraced the victim-mindset. I can sense inner stability and connect with it, I’ve always been able to connect to it actually, now that I make sense of it in terms of experiencing it consciously.
The thing is I’m feeling bad that I need to stop conversing with my mom on negative topics right now. I’m embracing that and I’m not suppressing, but one part of me is saying to me “you’re being bad, you’re not listening to your own mom, she has always done the best for you and made you believe in yourself, and now you protect yourself from her negative stories, because you’re the only one she can share them with”. Needless to say, I’m embracing all of that too, and allowing it as well. My question is, after the negative momentum in my being is gone, do you think I’ll be able to help, without soaking up the negativity myself?

WynoneOctober 28, 2012 at 3:55 pm

With the ‘need to stop conversing’ I mean that I sense that need in myself, it’s not a fixed belief or anything like that. It’s just how I feel right now.

MarkusOctober 29, 2012 at 9:40 pm

Wynone, you seem to have the seeds of a good future right in your short story. You understand what your mother does, why she does it, and how you learned it. Now you feel the need to let go of those patterns. All that sounds like the pieces are in place for you to let go of the emotional buildup and then build a new relationship with her on more balanced ground.

Breaking those harmful old patterns can feel hard to do. But isn’t that how it has to unfold? Out with the old, in with the new. Break down the old forms to make room for new ones.

SenPost authorOctober 30, 2012 at 11:41 am

Wynone, that’s right, when you are able to release the pull of your own mind/emotional momentum, you will find yourself to be in a very stable position to be of help to others without becoming identified with their suffering – empathy does not require you to suffer, empathy only requires you to be aware (or be sensitive) of someone’s suffering. In a place of conscious inner freedom/wholeness you will never try to avoid negativity, rather you don’t find anything having a negative impact on you – for one, you have real inner freedom, that includes having freedom from the influence of anything external, secondly you have a deeper understanding of life. If I have to look at my perspective right now, I don’t see anything as “negative”, I can see imbalance and see a possibility for balance, I can see the reality of light and dark nature of life (so I am not trying to cling to light nature hoping to never feel dark nature), I can see that growth is an inherent nature in our being (in life) and what seems negative is always just a call towards growth. This is not a perspective which I try to hold as a belief, it’s just the perspective I have from observing the reality of life.

WynoneOctober 28, 2012 at 6:42 pm

I forgot about something- wanted to ask you specifically about the identification.
When there are some negative thoughts in the mind, and we allow them, but they are formed in sentences, such as “I am…” this or that, aren’t they already identifications on their own? Even if we allow them to be? When I let such thoughts/emotions be, I allow them to surface and be as parts of myself (for the current time being)- at least that’s how I perceive them to be- as parts of myself. Is that an identification and if it is, is allowing enough to start dis-identifying, even if the thoughts come up formed as identifications?

SenPost authorOctober 30, 2012 at 11:49 am

Wynone,the underlying principle of the state of allowing to be free of identification. Allowing does not mean that you say “yes” to a thought, allowing means that you let the have its movement in the mind without being identified with it – this way you can observe the thought (objectively) and see it for what it is (you can see that it’s possibly just a deluded judgment, a call for growth, an old belief, an old conditioning, a child-identity in you etc). There can be a thought like “I am so clumsy”, and you can just see the thought for what it is rather than giving it your unconscious identification – this thought can contain a seed for growth in that you might be able to sense that your restlessness causes you to be clumsy or you might see that it’s a thought which has no real grounding in your current reality (may be you were clumsy as a kid, but now don’t have such a predisposition). When we give total identification to a thought there is no space of any real observation and hence no space of wisdom. The state of allowing is about creating this space.

PeterOctober 28, 2012 at 7:11 pm

Sen,

This might be a little off-topic, but do you think video games contribute to high mind momentum?

SenPost authorOctober 30, 2012 at 11:58 am

Peter, video games (most of them) are fast paced and pull in your attention, playing well requires you to have quick reflexes and there can be a sense of identity with the survival of the game character that you are playing – this causes the brain to be hooked on playing with a lot of focus. Playing video games moderately can be a good exercise (and entertainment) for your brain, but playing video games for hours together can cause you to disconnect with your body and with your sense of wisdom – this is because your awareness is glued to the game and hence is not available to the body or to your sense of wisdom (including not being available to the instincts and intuitions coming from your inner intelligence or intelligence of your life-stream), in that sense it becomes a means of “suppression” and suppression does lead to the build up of momentum of imbalance including the build up of a high mind momentum.

Sen,
I love this post because it answered a question that I asked myself just this morning: What do I really want? To be free (free of fear, doubt, etc). What do I need in order to be free? Well…nothing. I can be free the moment I fully accept all those thoughts (rather than attempting to get rid of them).
So NOW I’m attempting to do just that. And once I notice a fearful thought, I think “welcome, I accept you, thanks for being here.” Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn’t. Is this because I’m just using another mental strategy? I feel like I’m trying to fool myself.

SenPost authorOctober 30, 2012 at 12:20 pm

Kevin, the question you can ask yourself is that when you internally say “welcome, I accept you” are you doing it as a means to “try” to feel good? It looks that way, because you mention that “it works sometimes but usually it doesn’t work”, and what is implied by “it works sometimes” is that sometimes it makes you feel good, but usually it doesn’t. The pointer is that true allowing has nothing to do with “trying” to feel good, it’s about allowing yourself to feel “what is” – if there is fear you allow yourself to feel fear, instead of trying to bring yourself to a light-natured state through some spiritual outlook towards fear like saying “I am embracing fear and feeling good about it” – fear feels bad, that’s reality, it’s not about trying to make fear feel good. It’s about the openness to allow fear – so when I say be “okay” with fear, I don’t mean try to feel good when there is fear, I just mean develop the capacity to allow fear – same with depression or any other low feeling. It’s not about trying to convert a dark natured feeling into light nature, it’s about the openness to allow dark nature as it is, this openness allows a sense of wholeness to come through and wholeness is not a purely light-natured state of being it’s just a state of balance between light and dark aspects in you.

WynoneOctober 30, 2012 at 2:16 pm

Thank you for the replies, Markus & Sen.
All is good.

CaseyOctober 30, 2012 at 3:09 pm

Kevin,

You might be like me. I often feel like life should be lived predominately in light nature. When I’ve found myself in dark nature, I feel like something is “wrong” or that I have “failed”. The most important thing Sen has taught me, is to allow “what is”. BUT! It takes time. Months and months and months, in some cases. To be okay with something does not mean it feels good. Remember, everything is temporary.

OK, one quick follow up…how is the “openness to allow fear” related to letting go? Is it a step towards letting go? I’m getting mixed up on allowing fear and letting fear go…it’s not the same thing…is it?

JennyOctober 31, 2012 at 12:27 pm

It’s two sides of the same coin. It’s easy to get hung up on the meaning of these words and what helps is to break it down to a basic understanding. Let’s take a walk to the physics lab – it is no surprise to me now that so many physicists seem to be masters of alignment.

When we are unconsciously reacting to unpleasant emotions and thoughts, what is it we do? We suppress, judge, condemn, manipulate, control them in order to avoid experiencing them directly. We keep a lid on them, so to speak. Where do these feelings go? Nowhere. It’s all simmering underneath the surface, and what is much worse, they become the attraction point of our reality, and the harder we try to keep a lid on them, the more we fuel them subconsciously because it takes tremendous energy to keep our thoughts and emotions contained in this manner.

What is it to let go of something, anything? It is to release our grip, to uncurl our fingers from it, thereby releasing it from its chains. So what happens when we let go of suppressing, condemning, judging, controlling, manipulating our feelings (thought + emotion = feeling)? They rise to the surface of our conscious awareness. That means we get to feel them as they are, including the charge they contain. So if we are fearful, we feel the fear-charged feeling as it rises up, if we are angry, we feel the anger-laden feeling as it rises up, and on and on. So where is it rising to? Consider steam or vapor. When you have a pot of water simmering on the stove, and you keep a lid on it, that increases the temperature because everything is contained in a pressurized environment and so it heats up more until it reaches boiling point. What happens when you lift the lid off the pot? A rush of steam escapes, steam that is searingly hot, rising upwards and yes, it stings whatever is in its way. Ever observed what happens to the steam as it rises upwards? We never look at it, mostly because we are looking downwards at the boiled egg we’ve been cooking, wondering if its done yet or if we were too hasty….but I digress.
The steam rises upwards and initially, its a furious mass of hot stuff, but as it rises higher and higher, it dissipates. Why? Because it is rising into cold air, which has none of the pressure it was under on the stove to support it and so the cool air draws the heat out of it until eventually, in the blink of an eye, its gone. To create it again, you would need to subject the pot of water to the same conditions.

What is if this is exactly what happens to our feelings? What if in not dealing with them, we keep them pressurized tightly, and every now and then, out of exhaustion, the lid lifts a little and we blow off some steam (a magnificent idiom)? And what if we decide to lift the lid off entirely, blow off all the steam, not just some? What is the lid at this point made of? Suppression, judgement, manipulation, condemnation and all their relatives, guilt etc. What do we need to keep the lid off? The answer is openness. The lid must come off and for that, we need a fearless openness to the steam that is rising up, which is charged with all the feelings we have tightly suppressed. So what happens to letting go at this point? Personally, I have an understanding that helps me at this point – I transform letting go into letting arise. My mind can handle that image because it means that for whatever is arising to do so, there must be no obstruction in its path. So I let arise and arise and arise, until whatever it is, is met by the cool air of unconditioned wisdom and dissipates into the nothingness, precisely where it came from.

How long does it take? It takes as long as it takes, and I say this as one who has found a great measure of freedom in allowing this, though each new steam cycle feels like what Jabba the Hutt’s pants must feel like – nasty! Which is a good thing cos let me tell ya, you get real careful about putting that pot back on the stove again like before, eggs be damned!

Ps: Does Jabba the Hutt wear pants? Or is he pants?

SenPost authorOctober 31, 2012 at 1:31 pm

Jenny, thanks for taking the time to articulate this reply, the analogy you used is spot on to explain what the process of letting go (or letting arise) involves

AliasOctober 31, 2012 at 9:27 pm

Nice metaphor Jenny, it is like that. One could also say that when the “self” is absent, the lid is absent. The “self” as the ego, the one who suppresses, the one who manipulates, the one who encloses. The question is how can the “self” control the “self” and still be free? It may happen only if any desire to control is absent and by letting go into the steam as you describe.

julsOctober 30, 2012 at 9:51 pm

Sen,

I am learning to allow fear i.e not trying to turn a dark natured to a light natured instantly. Problem is, I’m in a relationship and gave kids and I feel I need to turn dark to light ASAP as it is obvious and uncomfortable for them when I am not the usual cheerful person. If I we’re truly to allow anger to run its course in terms of allowing the feeling and not thinking and analysing it I would need to set aside a good few hours or days even I don’t know and who wants to be around me if I’m like that. I might be angry with my partner do I tell her I need to go and be myself for a few days? So I’m wanting a practical way of doing this as I absolutely love my family and don’t want them to feel the brunt of anything that is not there problem.

Juls

MarkusOctober 31, 2012 at 4:36 pm

Juls, I won’t try to answer for Sen, but can share how parenting and releasing has worked for me. First, your children are far more observant than you might suspect. If you feel angry or sad, they know it – whether you show it or not. You can be honest with them while not giving them your own troubles. That is, even a young child can understand “I need to be alone right now. I feel angry and need to calm down so I am not mean to you.” Or whatever might fit your situation and children’s ages. They see you being honest and expressing concern for their well being. You show them it is normal to be upset or unhappy, and that there are (drama-free) ways to deal with it.

You and your partner can support each other by being understanding. However rocky your relationship might get, if you can give each other room to release, it can be the best thing for the children.

ElmirOctober 31, 2012 at 1:30 am

if there is fear you allow yourself to feel fear, instead of trying to bring yourself to a light-natured state through some spiritual outlook towards fear like saying “I am embracing fear and feeling good about it” – fear feels bad, that’s reality, it’s not about trying to make fear feel good. It’s about the openness to allow fear – so when I say be “okay” with fear, I don’t mean try to feel good when there is fear, I just mean develop the capacity to allow fear.

So basically what you are saying if you feel like crap continue to feel like crap until it goes away on its own?

SenPost authorOctober 31, 2012 at 1:53 pm

Elmir, the deal is that when we feel these emotions arising (in their high momentum) we tend to suppress them in many ways – either through a force of distraction or through denial or through trying to make it feel good in some way (which doesn’t allow you to feel the emotions as they are, and hence does not allow you to develop the openness in your being). So yeah, when you feel like crap don’t try to make yourself feel good, rather allow this feeling consciously – in fact when you try to make yourself feel good, that when you really start suffering because of your resistance to “what is” arising. When you are in a true state of allowing, the openness in you allows the development of inner power/freedom in your being, and this allowing also causes the release of accumulated momentum, so eventually you no longer feel these “intensely crappy moments” or intense emotional pressure, there is no momentum left in the emotional/mental intensity.

BonygOctober 31, 2012 at 9:25 am

Hi Sen, I am so glad I came across your site just over a month ago. It was a real AHA moment for me as everything you have been saying is resonating with the stage I had reached in my rebirth. I had spent 8 years awakening, with this incredilby intense desire to UNDERSTAND the world and the universe, researching all the religions, philosophies, spiritual practices in the world, eventually finding a kind of connection to Buddhism and Hinduism. This was where I first struck gold, finding my first nugget of truth that I had always known deep within – the insight into the fact that ‘God’ is within us not out there as a separate entity. But still there was no true alignment, as you say, there is a disregard if not disgust for the emotions or desire as being a hindrance to enlightenment. So like you say you end up trying to transcend them, but this doesn’t cure the imbalance of negative emotional accumulation. I then discovered about 6 months before I read your blog something that at last made sense. I always wondered why as a highly intelligent woman, with so much going for her, I felt so stuck and confused, anxious and depressed. Then I found the second nugget of truth. My problems were all emotional. This is something none of the religions, philosophies, self help books I had researched and perused had addressed. When I read your blog, that was it. Negative accumulated momentum, that just stroke the chord. Yes. That was why I was depressed and anxious. How on earth can anyone move on from trauma, or excessive negative momentum withou treleasing and allowing this pressure. No wonder positive thinking doesn’t work. That’s like trying to build a house on sand!!! You have to go back to the roots of all that unconscious adapted stuff you accumulated that often you may not recognise because actually it wasn’t your stuff, but belonged to the dysfunctions of your parents, teachers, peer group, society, culture, environment, whatever. And having that space of allowing works wonders to find that space between the old conditioned you and the new reborn you created from within – from your true authenticity. Then just before I read your most recent blog on: The Attitude Required for Inner Freedom’ I was questioning the feeling I got from your older blogs which spoke of surrendering to life energy and having complete trust in it. I felt a little uncomfortable with what I saw as losing complete control to this stream of life energy. This is because I was the victim of covert sexual/emotional incest from my father and when I asked him why, (he is an artist and believes in surrendering to your feelings and emotions) he said that he was inspired by me, fell in love with me and couldn’t control it. Now this is one of the reasons I have negative accumulated momentum over the years but it was insidious and hard to detect as it was covered up as love, and I was peruaded that my Dad was just acting on his natural emotions and feelings from life energy. He calls it love from his heart. I do not agree. Love is where you care about the feelings and needs of others, not just about your own feelings and needs. He was not thinking about how this was damaging me. In his blind totally unrepressed allowing of all his emotions and feelings, his natural life-stream he actually lost total control and did not see any negativity in his behaviour. Thought he was making me feel special and he said it felt like the most natural thing in the world, a pure, positive thing – to him. I can only guess his narcissistic ego ASSUMED it would be good for me too. As a vulnerable teenager, I felt totally out of control as a result due to his lack of control and boundaries. So this is where I feel uncomfortable with people just completely surrendering to their life energy/emotions/feelings without any control. I agree with you that nature is always trying to find balance and harmony and this is the truth of life, but nature is doing this unconsciously, randomly as a whole, without care or regard for any particular individual. It is up to us as consciously aware individuals to make sure that finding our own balance, harmony and truth does not hurt others and imbalance them in the process!

SenPost authorOctober 31, 2012 at 1:42 pm

Bonyg, that’s right, the responsibility towards physicality is about our personal authenticity and wisdom based on our understanding of the physical world, the more aware a person is the more he/she needs to use this awareness to also be aligned with the wisdom required to live (and allow others to live) in a collective harmony – it does take a real personal responsibility rather than just saying “I am surrendered to life and hence I did what felt like an emotional drive in me” (which is what I would call a spiritual excuse for irresponsibility), and its dangerous because one can easily take refuge in such an excuse and make into a means of being reckless or uncaring towards the physical. In the post – Awakening, transcendence and return of focus – I talk about return of focus as required phase in any awakening, where one has to take up personal responsibility again with a deliberation, to make conscious decisions based on authenticity, self-knowing, understanding reality of life and sensitivity, one can’t simply hold on to the pointer of surrender alone (which is what being stuck in transcendence stage is).

BonygOctober 31, 2012 at 10:26 pm

Hi Sen. Wow that was a quick reply. Mightily impressed! Can you please put bonyg (a nickname)on the above post, as my name is quite unusual and I don’t want everyone knowing about the covert incest thing.

So when people are going through the phase of surrendering to their life stream, is that why it is sometimes better to be able to isolate yourself? What do you think my Dad should have done with these out of control feelings and emotions of his towards me? I am angry at him for having not controlled them, as they did me alot of damage. He also became overbearingly jealous and possessive, and I was scared stiff to express my true self as a result. It seemed he later on in life was able to regain focus, and told me that yes he did have a problem with me but he was over it now. But by then it was too late, the damage had been done. He then went onto say that if he had not been out of control and surrendered to life-stream I would never have been conceived at all!… as he said I was born out of pure, passionate, uncontrollable love-making. So he was trying to say I should be grateful! I find all this very confusing. When I told my mum about it and why I was having therapy she said: ‘What did you expect me to do about it? Kick him out of the house?’ Well, what should someone like my dad do if they are having these so-called inspirational, uncontrollable feelings which are damaging others? Isolate themselves? What if they can’t do that as they have responsibilities like a family? or if they have to hold down a job, or have other responsibilities? It seems an unconscious person may do less damage to others than a conscious person who is so out of control like this. Very interested on what you think on this kind of issue.

SenPost authorOctober 31, 2012 at 11:51 pm

Bonyg, wisdom is the only yardstick with which you can measure a state of a person’s awareness (or consciousness). The lower your awareness, lesser is your wisdom, the higher your awareness, higher is your wisdom. Just because one has some spiritual knowledge does not mean one has high awareness, there are many deluded “spiritual” people (who claim to have high awareness) who have a very low level of awareness and use these half-baked spiritual understandings as an excuse to cover up their irresponsible or unwise actions or way of being. The way I see it, the very act of involving a child into sexual activity, by an adult, is rooted in a sense of irresponsibility and it lacks wisdom. Even if the adult is not being violent or aggressive, and is being “loving” during the sexual involvement, the fact remains that the child is not in a position of making a real choice ( as the child does not have the cognition to really understand it or have the physical/mental power to take action against it or stop it) and hence the adult is really imposing his/her will on the child – which in simple words is just “abuse”. To abuse someone is not rooted in wisdom as it has highly negative consequences, which are evident. Any truly aware person would know better than to abuse someone. So if your father is still defending his act by saying that it was an act of loving inspiration, it’s just a lot of nonsense and it just shows that he’s still stuck in a very low state of awareness mostly because he’s not willing to be authentic with himself – an authentic person would see it for what it is, it’s just abuse of a child and a highly irresponsible act on the part of a parent to do that. In many posts, I talk about “being authentic” as a very important requirement for anyone who truly wants to grow in awareness – one has to be really honest with oneself instead of taking refuge in some “self defending” excuse. I am not suggesting that your father needs to live in guilt and pain for what he did, but if he wants to grow in awareness, as a being, he will need to acknowledge his act for what it was and be willing to become more mature – to justify his irresponsibility this way is the path towards being stuck in low awareness. A truly conscious person wouldn’t behave in an irresponsible manner or an unwise manner, your father had low awareness (unconscious state of being) when he was abusing you and he still has a low awareness since he’s defending what he did as the right thing.

There are many “inspirations” that can arise in a human which may be purely rooted in “indulgence”, and without wisdom these inspirations become the source of imbalanced and irresponsible actions. For example, one can have a strong “inspiration” to eat a double-cheese burger while on the path to lose weight, in truth its not a wisdom-based inspiration it’s just an indulgence-based inspiration coming from a place of craving – but one can defend this “inspiration” as coming from a divine place and allow the indulgence, only to see the extra pounds showing on them as they keep indulging in their so-called “divine” inspirations for double-cheese burgers. One has to be authentic to acknowledge irresponsibility, else it’s easy to defend any act of irresponsibility and live in a denial. However, it takes a “willingness” to be authentic with oneself, and this willingness is not exercised by many. When one has low awareness, and is unwilling to grow in awareness, their life is dominated by imbalanced influences and at some point they do start facing the consequences of their imbalances. They don’t have isolate themselves, they have to develop the willingness to be more authentic and a willingness to be more aware of reality – for example, if your dad was willing to be more aware (and authentic) he can easily see the pain, and confusion, that his act caused in your life and this awareness can then be the key towards becoming more mature as a human being.

His argument that you were born out of the inspired love making he did with your mom, to justify his sexual abuse of you under a similar inspiration, is deeply ridiculous, considering the fact that sex between two consenting adults is not “abuse”, but sex with a child is abuse. You have the right to be angry about what he did, and you don’t have to feel bad about being angry, neither do you have to “try” to forgive him for what he did considering the fact that he’s still defending his act, rather you would now need to look at what happened as the consequence of a low-awareness state in your father and move on from it. You will have to consciously let go of the past, not through trying to forgive, but by just letting go through the understanding that it’s done with, it’s over – you are now an adult and you now have the choice to live the life that’s aligned with you. To let go of the past is very straight-forward if you simply let go of it because it’s over, if you keep trying to “forgive” your past you will stay stuck in it because your mind authentically has no real reason to forgive an irresponsible act – just let go of the past because it’s past, and because you are in a different position now. You have to start living your life in your current position as an adult, and let go of any child-identity momentum that may be present in you. The whole act of “trying” to forgive never works because it’s just not authentic, there’s no real need to forgive something that was “wrong”, you just need to make the choice to move on that’s all.

AnonymousNovember 1, 2012 at 6:28 pm

Bonyg: “When I told my mum about it and why I was having therapy she said: ‘What did you expect me to do about it? Kick him out of the house?”

YES. Followed by a call to the police. I know this is in the past, but wow – mum is just as wrapped up in the denial as dad. Fear of being a single mother outweighed the safety and well-being of her own child! Parents are supposed to protect their children. Good luck in your work to put this behind you.

AliasNovember 1, 2012 at 6:35 pm

Bonyg, you have to let go of the past, just as Sen says. This is not escaping reality. It is a different thing to escape the reality of now, which is “what is” and a totally different thing to escape the prison of the past, which is what was. Live in the now, in the present but with the wisdom of the past, not the memories of the past, but the wisdom (wisdom as knowledge without personal emotions among other things). It is not real anymore, your past and all the experiences that traumatized you, except in your mind, in your memories. You keep it alive by thinking of it, by trying to find a resolution, to justify it somehow, or to condemn it.

You are trapped in a relationship with your past, which is basically a dead end; One part of you, the part being hurt want’s to find out the “why”, to hear an excuse or a reason behind such behavior, to understand how such a behavior can be accepted, how to cope with it, or how to condemn it in such a totalitarian way that it can never hurt you again. This part of you belongs to the past, it is the part of thought that gathers HALF its power from the trapped feelings, from the pain, from the memories. And there is another part of you, one living in the present, that want’s to simply end all this and move on with life. This part of you, which has written the above post, is mysteriously enough providing the other HALF of the power that reinforces the old memories, and therefore the trauma. It is the conflict between those opposing thoughts that gives existence to things, to memories, to consciousness; Things that make you feel good, or things that make you feel bad.

On one hand you want to end it, but again you just can’t let go of it. You obviously know that it’s just a though pattern, that it can end easily, just like millions of other thoughts were born, lived and died inside your consciousness. But you keep bringing it to the surface. Do you know why? It is of great importance to know why you keep living it, why do you need to identify with the past at such an extend. Moreover not only your identification with that particular part of your past, but with all the abyss of the past. I am not suggesting that one should or shouldn’t re-live his past through memories, or through actions that give continuance to such past, carrying it over to the now; I am simply suggesting to investigate into the “why” one does it.

We perceive time as past, present and future – and our bodies and minds operate through though, action and desire. We want to either push away the past or to give it continuance and so thoughts which are the re-action to our memories come to life. These thoughts project a desirable future into our consciousnesses, and our actions try to transform or solidify this probability into a reality.

You know, inside your mind, you keep re-creating the past. You keep rendering this image of your Dad, his actions, his excuses, his all attitude. You are also re-creating an image of your old self, your attitude, your re-actions and so on. But inside your consciousness, there is truly no time, not at all in terms of past, future and present. It’s an abyss of memories, conscious experiences, unconscious experiences, ideas, aspirations, expectations, dreams, projections, hopes…. if one decides to put these in order, well, one will require many -many lifetimes…. It’s a labyrinth with no end truly. To be FREE of it, is to never ENTER it.

Inside your mind, your conscientiousness is making all these things real. They were real in the past, but not anymore. You know they say time heals everything and its true in many ways but each event will leave its scar, and in the end it is up to us, to stop scratching the scar and let it heal. Also it is up to us to learn from past experiences, and never carry them over to the future (what caused you pain, will most likely cause pain to others), and so now that you know you cannot ignore it anymore. You see ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, it is an action, which is “to ignore”. Trauma or enlightenment are not that different, because where there is light, everything is lit. One cannot hide or ignore anymore. And so your dad will eventually stop ignoring and see the truth of his actions; and you’ll never be ignorant either. The mind itself cannot unravel this twist and it shouldn’t try to either bury the memories, or to identify with them. In time, the whole thing will migrate into a subtler level, and desire to overcome, will transform in compassion – which is con-passion as passion for others (also with others). Others that may have similar experiences, or any other kind of hurtful experience.

Sorry for such a long post, I hope I helped in some way, and not caused confusion (which is the result of so many words and opinions). I’m not trying to merely express opinions, but rather some realizations I have that I truly hope to be of help to you.

BonygNovember 1, 2012 at 1:29 am

Wow! Thankyou again for such a quick response. Are you doing this full-time and how are you being funded? You are right about the different motivations or energy behind inspiration. I worshipped my Dad when I was a child as many children do with their parents. They really are kind of God-like figures you look up to and blindly trust. I believe this in itself can cause unconscious negative momentum in everyone to varying degrees as very few have a perfect childhood. This is why parenthood is such a responsibility and why I have consciously chosen not to become one so far in my life. But what happened was that as a teenager I became so emotionally tuned into my father that he was able to manipulate me, and it is hard even to this day to see the objective truth of the situation. But you are right. Looking back I was the source of this ‘inspiration’. He saw me as his ideal woman, his soul-mate, into whome he threw all his unfulfilled dreams and fantasies. I was his escapism from a place of fear and powerlessness. He didn’t choose to marry my mother, but married her because she was pregnant with me. And I later found out when he burst into tears one Christmas that he always felt insecure and upset because he had lost his virginity to her, but she had slept with another man before him, when they had decided to have a break. So it seems he was still rumminating over that 35 years later. They are like chalk and cheese. She is cold, domineering and practical, while he is hyper-sensitive, passive, warm and dreamy. He felt sexually rejected, disempowered and disillusioned with her, and so there I was all innocent and powerless – a beautiful ideal object and empty vessel on which to project all his fears and insecurities and suck back (literally it was like a leech!) his desperate and immature neediness for validation. Well I was in no postition to challenge or reject him was I – cause he had power over me – and of course it was easier for him to make me into an extension of him as we shared the same genes. He even said to me once: ‘I created you. You belong to me.’ And yes you are also right about my right to be angry. I am very angry. But I also can’t get my head around how such an intelligent man could be so unconscious, with low awareness. That is something else I am discovering that conscious awareness and wisdom are not the same energy as learned mechanical intelligence, even if it is the artistic abstract kind. Also you have stated before that some people who reach a state of inner freedom could easily abuse their power if they do not have a value system in place. Did you mean these people can also be conscious people with high awareness? I believe some people, especially Narcissists can often be completely aware of abusing others, believing they are God and feel no guilt about sacrificing others to their desires as some kind of entitlement or reward. Jimmy Saville springs to mind. He apparently said he’d had a word with God who justified his abuse of children as his reward for his charity work! Also forgiveness. I’m not sure if you said that it was necessary to forgive people, but you said something about trying to understand that everyone is made up of unique energy and at different levels of awareness, so understanding this can alleviate any anger and irritation felt towards these people. You have also said before that it is a waste of energy to have negative feelings which can just attract more negative situations/vibrations. My goodness, you have unleashed a never-ending torrent of words and thoughts from me tonight! I really do appreciate your time and wisdom. I am a writer and am truly amazed by your wonderful insights. I have been searching for at least 8 years for the kind of inspiration I have found most profound and true in your writing.

DougNovember 1, 2012 at 3:09 am

Sen, I appreciate your articles and your wisdom. In regard to trust, I believe in God and believe I have had an encounter with god. I am not willing to not trust in something beyond myself. Can a person adapt these teachings to their spiritual beliefs? Many people believe in a higher power, how can they marry these ideas to that?

SenPost authorNovember 2, 2012 at 1:12 pm

Doug, allow yourself the freedom to believe what resonates with you, as long as it’s not driving you into a mindset of fear it will be aligned with your sense of well-being. The practice of allowing a release of accumulated emotional/mental momentum does not depend on following any beliefs, so you can stay true to your beliefs/understandings/faith while allowing the release of past accumulated momentum. Of course, you can also bring in the understanding that who you are is life-energy and your well-being is independent of your faith, in the sense that life is not out to punish you, it’s always a movement towards your balance and well-being (whether you trust it or not, it stays true to its nature of being a force of well-being), and your very nature is rooted in wisdom and well-being, it’s only our inner resistances (created through emotional and mental accumulation of negativity) that causes us to disconnect/resist this natural sense of well-being/wholeness in us.